PRETTY SICK – “MAKES ME SICK MAKES ME SMILE” (Released 2nd December 2022)

Description

//Dirty Hit//

£18.99 – 1xLP

Makes Me Sick, Makes Me Smile, the new album by Pretty Sick, sees London-by-way-of-New York Sabrina Fuentes juxtapose a life between two cities where destiny is shaped by the force of our own hands. A fully-realized, visceral experience that’s both blunt, bleak and stubbornly romantic, it weaves together the heady visions of prior EPs ‘Come Down’ and ‘Deep Divine’ into an uncompromising portrait that’s point-blank and personal.

Fuentes penned lyrics between New York and London, and the album maps out the fault lines within each city. “I’d rather die than let you go / and you’ll die before you let me,” she sings in the opening chorus of the anthemic “Yeah You,” one of the many times Makes Me Sick, Makes Me Smile contemplates the complex ties of finding a home within a scene, which Fuentes explains “is a breakup letter” to the city. Fuentes grew up in Manhattan, and assumed she’d carry on working after various fashion internships at VFILES and Helmut Lang, until she had a life-changing conversation at a dinner party where an acquaintance pulled her aside and was adamant she get out.

Across the 12 tracks, Fuentes grapples with her claustrophobic surroundings, and the idea that the environment you exist in can be a matter of life or death. Chock full of flashbacks to anxiety and the warped sense of realism that comes from teetering on the precipice, Fuentes recalls toxic relationships, power imbalances and a myriad of dangerous situations that “still keep me up at night.” For fans of Hole, Babes in Toyland etc.